On a sweltering summer’s day in Tokyo salary men on lunch
duck from air-conditioned building to air-conditioned building. One common oasis
from the heat (and office) is a pachinko parlour, Japan’s equivalent of a slot arcade.

To a gaijin
(foreigner) entering a pachinko parlour for the first time, the first thing
that hits you is the fog of cigarette smoke, a harsh difference from the
no-smoking laws in other parts of the developed world. Inside is uniquely
Japanese. Row upon row of pachinko machines echo a cacophony of bells and
cartoon voices, and the mostly male players sit rigid, watching silver balls bounce
around (pachin refers to the sound of
the ‘ko’, or ball), hoping they will
fall down into the winning centre hole. The more balls they win, the more cash they
will get.

This pinball derivative played by millions
of people in Japan has been popular in the country since the 1940s – although
today the machines are much more sophisticated and addictive than the original mechanized
game. Within the pachinko machine’s frame of pulsing LED lights, silver metal
balls tumble around on pins. They fall from the top, controlled only by gravity
and the luck of which pins they bounce off. Once in motion, the player can only
watch and hope. Dominating the centre of each machine is an LCD screen that loudly
plays segments of the latest Japanese anime
(animation) or TV show along with the score of any winnings.

Unlike casinos, which are based on direct cash
winnings and therefore illegal under Japan’s strict gambling laws,
pachinko is legal on a loophole related to how you claim your prize. It is also
tinged with taboo because of its associations
to the Japanese mafia which once controlled the prize cash outs.. “I know
it's not good because it’s gambling, but sometimes I play,” said Yuji Nagata, a
28-year-old male systems engineer from Tokyo.
Unlike Western slot machines, which are usually relegated to the back of bars
or windowless casinos, pachinko parlours have a large street-facing presence,
often around stations and on busy shopping strips in every town and city in Japan.Espace (1-23-3 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku;
03-3208-1115) is one of the largest parlours in Tokyo with three floors of
pachinko right in the centre of the busy, fashionable neighbourhood of Shinjuku,
enticing passing shoppers off the street with flashing lights. Thousands of people come here to play every
day. “Once I won 200,000 yen! But usually I lose,” said Nagata.

Espace may look like a fun video arcade
from the street, but to the many players who stare intently at the machines and
fate-making balls, it is clearly more than just a game. One player, Yukie
Taniguchi, a 30-year-old computer graphics researcher, fed 100 yen coins into
the machine to get credit in the form of the steel balls costing four yen each,
which poured out like liquid precious metal into the tray protruding from the
front. Despite all the noise from other machines, there was a sense of
excitement. The balls tumbled around his Hunger Games-themed machine with all
the fanfare of a lottery. He turned the doughnut-sized dial -- the only element
of control the player has over the game -- to shoot the balls into the top of
the machine, fast or slow, depending on his spin of the dial. The balls bumbled
around like silver flies against a window, bouncing off pins, toward the bottom
where Taniguchi willed them to enter the central chamber. When they did, the
screen’s animation lit up one of three numbers from one to nine. In slot
machines, three matching cherries means a win; in Pachinko, three matching
numbers (such as 444 or 999) on the screen wins more metal balls to play on
with or to cash in. Winning also advances the plot of the anime or TV show
playing on the screen, otherwise the story keeps looping around. One of
Taniguchi’s wins gave out 10,000 balls, worth 2.5 yen per ball when “cashed” in.

Taniguchi swapped the tray of thousands of winning
silver balls for a receipt, which in turn was swappable for alcohol, toys or
other prizes. To get money, you need to ask for the “special prize” tokens.
These are plastic gold-coloured tokens that can be swapped for cash -- but not
within the pachinko parlour. Instead, they are cashed in at TUC shops that are
always located nearby and exist as a legal loophole enabling you to win money
in a country that technically forbids gambling. The exchange of prizes for cash
was once controlled by the yakuza (Japanese
mafia), but has been cleaned up by the police, who now regulate it in this way.

It sounds elaborate for a game, but
pachinko is both big business and a national obsession – there are more than 12,500
pachinko halls in Japan, some with slot machines, which together make four times as much profit
as all the rest of the world’s legal casino gambling combined. The game itself generates
30 trillion yen profit a year for the pachinko companies.

Setsuko Chiba was introduced to pachinko by
her husband. When they split up, she continued to play regularly for 15 years, using
it as supplementary income to support her family. “It was part of the same
chain – pachinko, cigarettes and cans of coffee,” explained Chiba. Trolleys
laden with drinks and food for sale are continuously pushed around the parlours,
encouraging people to stay longer. Like other pros, she targeted new machines
-- which are programmed to give out frequent winnings over the first few days
to attract new customers -- and her average win was around 70,000 yen on a good
day. She also made large losses, and over the years her teeth and eyesight declined
from neglect and hours spent at the machines. When her children complained of
her long absences, it was a wake up call. She used her winnings to transition toward
a more legitimate use of her gambling skills, becoming a self-employed
stockbroker. She gave up smoking and pachinko at the same time, two taboos for Japanese
women.

Now 58, Chiba represents a
new market that the pachinko giants want to capture – female players who want
to play this stress-relieving game but without any stigma. Quieter, cleaner
parlours are opening up where balls can be bought for just one yen each (rather
than the usual four yen) with smaller potential winnings to switch the focus onto
the game itself rather than gambling. Many modern mega-parlours, such as Maruhan(28-6 Utagawacho Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; 03-5458-3905) now offer smoke-free areas, following
the lead of international brands in Japan like McDonalds and Starbucks.
Prizes, such as handbags, are also targeting women. P-ARK Ginza(5-12-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo; 03-3546-0003) even has
pamphlets with pachinko instructions in English to attract tourists to the game.
A visit to any pachinko parlour is still a very Japanese experience, but in the
future it may look more like a family-friendly Las Vegas casino.